The Devil's Concubine ARC

by Jill Braden

  Did she actually trust Kyam Zul?

  Almost unwillingly, she admitted that she liked him. And she found him dangerously attractive. But trust was a rare coin, one she didn’t spend freely.

  Her eyes felt heavy. She blinked and forced them open.

  There was a quiet knock at the door, and then Kyam ducked beneath the low entrance and shut the door behind him. Hadre wasn’t with him. Before he could speak, QuiTai said, “I am curious about... well, many things, but first things first. Isn’t it dangerous to sail at night?”

  Rubbing the back of his neck, Kyam had the grace to look embarrassed. “Figured that out, did you?”

  “As you mentioned before, I’m the brains of this partnership.”

  Kyam sat on the edge of the mattress. “Partnership? I like the sound of that. So, if you’re the brains, that makes me...”

  “The brawn, I expect.” Without a shirt, it was hard to ignore that he was definitely brawny.

  In a way, it was a relief being trapped on board. She didn’t have to face Petrof yet. The world could go on very well without her help for a night, and there were worse ways to spend that time. She looked Kyam over. Much worse, indeed.

  Grinning, he filled her wine glass and handed it to her.

  “Stop trying to distract me, Mister Zul. I asked if it’s safe to sail at night.” It wasn’t his fault that her imagination kept wandering into embraces with him. She would take responsibility for those wicked thoughts.

  “I wouldn’t dream of distracting you.” He reclined at the end of the bed and massaged her good foot. Tension melted from her as his thumbs pressed soothing circles into her arch.

  She sipped the wine. It only seemed to make her thirstier.

  “Is this entirely personal, or do you have a professional interest in me? Do be honest. I deserve that. Your cousin recognized my name. That makes me wonder if your government knows it too.”

  Kyam looked sheepishly guilty. “I might have mentioned you in passing last time I went drinking with Hadre. The past few times, perhaps.” He carefully rubbed her other foot. “And it’s always been an entirely personal interest.”

  Sleepily, she grinned. “People are going to be terribly disappointed if we start being nice to each other in public.”

  Kyam commented rather crudely on what the people could do with their disappointment.

  QuiTai covered her mouth as she yawned. Her hand trailed down her neck and stopped at the vial of black lotus hanging from the chain.

  Kyam frowned.

  “I keep it to remind me why I’m mixed up in all this. If you don’t approve, that’s too bad. I don’t care what you think of me.”

  He made a face.

  “I don’t care what you think of Jezereet either. She was an addict. The past year, that’s who she was, not just a problem she had. Everyone else abandoned her, but I couldn’t, because it was my fault.” QuiTai’s lips trembled. “The Devil can be so charming when he wants to be. He has presence. She was so used to being worshipped by her admirers that she didn’t suspect his plans when he shared the vapor with her. And she thought I was simply jealous. Then it was too late.”

  “I’m sorry about that. But that’s not why I didn’t like her. Still, you loved her, so I won’t say anything unkind right now. Eventually you’ll ask for the truth, and I’ll tell you.”

  Rolling the vial between her fingers, QuiTai tried to explain. “Guilt isn’t love, but since she became addicted, I pretended it was for her sake. Any love I had for her died long ago with the real Jezereet. It’s terrible of me, I know, but that’s the ugly truth. So when I ask, go ahead and let me know the worst.”

  “You can bet I will. Plenty of meat to go with that rice, so to speak.” Kyam rubbed his forehead. His eyes were weary and his shoulders slumped. “I’ve seen too many vapor ghouls to trust black lotus, but if you need a little to help you rest, I might be able to find a pipe on board. You really do need to sleep. I’m surprised you’re still conscious after the beating you’ve taken the past two days.”

  “You look beat too. Get some sleep, Kyam.”

  He nodded as he slowly came to his feet. He bent down and pressed his lips to her forehead.

  Her eyes closed: this time, no matter how hard she fought, they wouldn’t open again. One moment, she was awake; the next, she was in dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 13: A Vision

  The murmur of men’s voices brought QuiTai gently out of sleep. Hadre and Kyam spoke quietly across the cabin. Faint silvery light streamed through the cabin’s open windows as if dawn hadn’t broken the horizon yet.

  “Awake already?” Kyam asked.

  She held the sheet to her chest as she sat up. A blouse and sarong sat on the table beside the bed. They were old and a bit faded, but she didn’t care. As she pulled on the blouse, she noticed that the movement of the ship felt different.

  “Something changed since last night. When I sailed home from the continent, sea dragons swam alongside the hull, took guide ropes from the junk, and guided us into port. That wasn’t the sound of sea dragons I heard, and the distinctive scent of juam nut oil lingers. You have an engine on board, a big one,” she said.

  Hadre set down the peculiar brass instrument in his hand. He pointedly didn’t look at her. “Very perceptive. We raised the sails about an hour ago. Had to, now that the sun is about to come up.”

  “Told you she was sharp,” Kyam said.

  “If anyone asks, Lady QuiTai, I implore you to stick with our story that you fell asleep immediately after the ship’s doctor tended to your wounds,” Hadre said.

  QuiTai wrapped the sarong around her waist. Hadre’s face grew pinker. She’d forgotten how prudish Thampurians could be.

  “Your secret propulsion device is safe with me. I’m much more interested in our route than sounds below the deck.” She sat at the table and peered at the chart Hadre had spread out in a curious frame, but the wonderful smell of breakfast tore her from the puzzle. “Oh, food. Excellent idea. Does anyone mind if I...” Before the men could answer, she dropped a piece of fish on top of the rice, draped seaweed over it, and quickly formed a roll that she popped into her mouth. The seaweed was slick on her tongue. The fish had been liberally doused in tart citrus juice that puckered her mouth. Cuisine at sea was never to her liking, but complaining to her host was beyond rude. Even food she didn’t like was better than none, after all.

  Now that she’d eaten something, she could concentrate better on the machine before her. She pointed to the chart past the rendering of the island to the dashed lines that surrounded it. “I see you know about the sand bars off the leeward side of the island. In some places, you can walk a mile from shore and the water will only be up to your chin. I know that junks have shallower drafts than, say, Ravidian ships, but you’d still run aground long before we reached the leeward plantations. At least, I assume we’re off to confront the Ravidians.”

  Resting his elbow on the back of his chair, Kyam grinned at her. “The adventure continues.”

  “You’re in a cheerful mood this morning. Did I miss something?” She made another seaweed roll.

  “Nothing we can’t continue at a more convenient time. It’s a pity we were both so tired last night.”

  “Kyam! Really!” Hadre sputtered.

  QuiTai and Kyam exchanged an amused glance. “We’ve scandalized your cousin, Mister Zul.”

  “He’s spent his life at sea, so that’s saying something, Lady QuiTai.”

  “It’s good to know that our ability to entertain and astound hasn’t diminished. Tea?” She lifted the pot.

  Kyam handed her his cup. “Please.”

  “Captain Hadre?” Dazed, he pushed his cup toward her. She filled it. “What was that instrument you held earlier?” she asked Hadre.

  Obviously relieved at the turn from scandalous topics, Hadre picked up the brass contraption. “First I set the chart number into this bit by the frame, then set in our current longitude and latitude. I touch this end of
the instrument to our present position on the chart and the other one to our destination. This wire connects the instrument to the frame, so it can read what I’ve touched. Then a series of numbers appear here, along the frame, that our navigator uses to calculate all sorts of wondrous information. Don’t know if I trust it yet, but I’m under orders to use it and report back.”

  “Interesting.” From the look on his face, her curiosity alarmed him. If it was such a big secret, he shouldn’t have told her. As repayment for his kindness, she’d pretend to ignore it. “Now, about our approach to the leeward side of the island: How do you propose to avoid the shallow water? We’re not going to sail all the way to the end of the archipelago, round the islands, and come back at the windward side. That would take weeks. So can I assume that you intend to sail through the Ponong Fangs?”

  Hadre nodded. “Precisely.”

  She stood to get a better look at that end of the chart. Her ankle barely twinged when she put weight on that foot. “The tide pool plantations are clustered here, here, and here, but the one I’d take over if I were a Ravidian hoping for privacy is this one.” She pointed to Cay Rhi, a small island about a mile southwest of Ponong. “The owners are notoriously private. They hardly even socialize with the other plantation owners. A monthly skiff brings their supplies and takes their harvest back to the harbor, and I’d be willing to bet that the harbor master and his brother were the ones who made that run. It might have been months, maybe years, before anyone realized they’d gone missing.”

  Kyam and Hadre studied the chart.

  “That is why you brought me on board, wasn’t it? To show you the exact location of the Ravidians? As I said, I’ve sailed on many junks before, and none raised anchor in ten minutes. The Golden Barracuda was ready to sail before the soldiers brought us to the harbor.”

  “Frightening, isn’t she?” Kyam asked his cousin.

  “Formidable. No wonder the Devil was able to consolidate his power in less than two years.” Hadre bowed to QuiTai.

  “That idiot doesn’t seem to appreciate what he’s got,” Kyam said. QuiTai popped another fish roll into her mouth.

  “The family that lives across the landing from my apartment is from Cay Rhi,” Kyam said. “They wanted their daughters to get a better education and wanted their sons to marry up, so they moved to Levapur. They often talk about their village on the edge of the lagoon.”

  QuiTai pointed to the lagoon on the map. “That’s where the skiff docks. Most of the Ponongese from that village work on the plantation.” And then a horrible vision swept over her. She gripped the arm of her chair and collapsed into it.

  “QuiTai,” Kyam said, “What is it?”

  Hopeless in the face of what she envisioned, she raised her gaze to his. “The villagers would know, Kyam. The Ravidians would have to silence them too. They have several days head start on us. We might be too late.”

  Kyam reached for Hadre’s arm. “Cousin, you heard her. Lives are in the balance.”

  “I can’t use the engine. As it is, I’m going to catch hell for using them last night. Enemy spies might be watching from Ponong, and our speed and wake would give them vital information I’m not allowed to disclose. I’m sorry, Lady QuiTai, but it would endanger the neck of every person on board.”

  Disgusted, Kyam tossed his pile of farwriter messages across the desk. “It will take hours to sail around the east end of the island, and longer still to negotiate the Fangs, even with your charts. Damn the rules, Hadre. People may be dying.”

  “This is precisely the kind of thinking that got you exiled, Kyam. And as Lady QuiTai pointed out, they already may be dead.”

  “Turn around,” QuiTai said. Her throat hurt. The spark of energy she’d had when she woke sapped out into a fog of despair. If only she hadn’t dismissed the Ravidians as simply a Thampurian problem.

  “What?” Hadre asked.

  “Turn your ship around, Captain. Sail west for the leeward side. We can be there in half the time.”

  “But the sand bars!”

  Her chair tipped over as she jumped to her feet. She pointed to a section of the map with no markings. “You can anchor here, where the water is deep. We’ll lower the lifeboats and row the rest of the way. Or Kyam can shift and I’ll hang onto him. Or damn it, I’ll swim the rest of the way myself!”

  A moment… and then Hadre dashed out of the cabin, and QuiTai heard him shouting orders to change course. “I knew I liked him,” she said.

  Kyam said, “I think he likes you too.”

  Chapter 14: Race to Cay Rhi

  With the change of course, the activity on board took on new urgency. QuiTai withdrew from Hadre’s cabin as his navigator and several other uniformed members of the crew gathered around his desk. She stood on deck, at a loss as to what she could do to help.

  “Excuse me, miss,” a sailor said as he rushed past her.

  She headed for another part of the deck.

  “Pardon me, I need to tie off these ropes.”

  She retreated to the bow, which seemed to be the only place on deck where no one was working. Sea spray misted her face as she leaned against the rail. Even with the wind favoring them, it would take two hours to come within sight of Levapur again. From the shadows on the deck, noon was still several hours away. It would be late afternoon before they reached Cay Rhi.

  The crimson sails of the Golden Barracuda were like partially unfolded fans, with thin strips of timbergrass that ran through the sailcloth and bowed in the wind. High atop the masts, the banners bearing the Zul chop undulated like a sea dragon through water. At the far end of the junk, over Captain Hadre’s cabin, a gang of muscle-bound sailors manned the rudder.

  Kyam came out of Hadre’s cabin and headed toward her. He moved with natural ease across the deck, unlike her awkward attempts to stay out of the sailors’ way. She would have never called him clumsy on land, but she could see that he was much more at home at sea. His permanent scowl had been replaced by buoyant anticipation.

  “I received a message on the farwriter from the fortress. We lost a few soldiers, but the rebellion was put down within an hour after we fled, and the werewolves were hanged at sunrise. Unfortunately, one wolf still seems to be at large.”

  She ignored his hint. She’d already accepted that Petrof was trying to kill her, even if she still didn’t understand why.

  The verdant smell of the island came to her on shifts of wind. It had been several years since she’d stood on a ship and seen her home from a distance. Long streaks of white cataracts cut through the deep green of the mountains. Mist shrouded some of the high peaks: Up there it rained every day, sometimes all day long. At the lower elevations, the plantation terraces made the mountainsides look like banded malachite. The land came to an abrupt stop at the edge of cliffs where few plants clung to the red clay soil. Below the cliffs, the water was shades of turquoise. The beauty of her island made her ache. When she’d returned home from the continent, she’d wanted to rush ahead of the ship to touch the land as soon as she could. Now the same urge overwhelmed her.

  Kyam said, “I’ve sent messages to everyone in Thampur, protesting the actions of the colonial military last night. It’s a mess. Intelligence is fighting to keep me in charge. Not for my sake, but because it’s a matter of jurisdictional jealousy. The colonial government is calling in every favor they can to maintain their sovereignty. I shouldn’t be telling you this, but you should know that I have the least influence of anyone in this fight. You keep believing in me for some reason, so I’m doing my best to be worthy of your faith.”

  “Fight for yourself, Mister Zul, not for my esteem.”

  He leaned against the railing. “At least Hadre didn’t run the engines at full throttle last night. If he had, we would have been through the Ponong Fangs already.”

  “Thank goodness he didn’t throw caution to the wind, so to speak?” It was the sort of flippant remark he’d expect her to make, even though her heart wasn’t in it.

&nb
sp; She cradled her head in her hands. “I keep thinking that if I’d convinced the Devil sooner to let me hire you to paint my portrait, we would be already be there. But then I remind myself that I didn’t even know what the Ravidians smuggled onto the island until yesterday. Or was that two days ago? I’m losing track.”

  “You can’t be serious. You blame yourself for this?”

  “I should have seen it.” The vial of black lotus nestled between her breasts. If only she could consult the Oracle. Who could she talk into taking the vapor, though? Kyam?

  He gently pulled her hands from her face. “Even your vision has limits.”

  He couldn’t have known how that tempted her. The Oracle was never wrong, but would she give the answers QuiTai desperately needed?

  “As you’ve been pointing out with boring regularity, I can be selectively blind. That isn’t what concerns me, though. I sense a pattern. Something is coming together, but I can’t think fast enough to stay ahead of it, or to see what it’s leading to. Selective blindness can be fixed. This…” She shook her head. “It’s like trying to grasp wraiths in a vapor dream. Smoke through my fingers. It’s as if I catch glimpses out of the corner of my eye, but when I try to look directly at it, nothing is there. Like the glass shards and the sea wasp stinger in that puddle on the skiff. That’s the image that keeps coming back to me. Bloody glass. If only I could find the right angle…”

  There was a glint of dark humor in his eyes. “Is this a daily thing? Do you get contemplative and morose every morning, or is there something about me that turns your thoughts to doom and gloom?”

  Wryly smiling, she laughed at herself. “It’s you, of course. Normally, I’m a little rainbow of joy and happiness.”

  “Of course you are.”

  Kyam leaned against the railing and looked at the coastline. “When I was five, or six at the most, my father and grandfather took me on my first voyage. I think we went to Rantuum. It was the longest and shortest week of my life. Longest because it was the first time I’d ever been away from home. Shortest because it flew by so fast. Every school break after that, I hopped on board whatever junk was headed to sea and worked as a common sailor. My grandfather believed in learning the business from the bottom up. Being land bound is the worst part of my banishment. Every time I see one of our ships in the harbor, I get that itch to go to sea.”